Growing Chastity and Uprooting Lust

Growing Chastity and Uprooting Lust. We are bombarded with lustful images daily.  Billboards, commercials, song lyrics, and the like are often filled with impurity.  It can be difficult to live lives of purity and chastity.  Yet, it is that to which we are called.  Why does God ask that of us?  It’s because He is very invested in our freedom!  He was from the beginning when He created us with free will, and even when man failed and turned away from Him, He sent Jesus to restore our freedom.

Sometimes, we can get the idea that lust is true freedom, but that is a lie.  Lust is a counterfeit attempt at the connection that leads us to compulsive and even addictive behavior.  Ted Bundy is a notorious serial killer who said that it was his early childhood exposure to pornography that led him into deeper and deeper bondage.  Ultimately, the desire to possess and use another human being for his own gratification led him to kill many people.

Chastity is expressed differently according to our state in life.  If we are married, it is being faithful to our spouse and sexuality, being oriented toward self-gift, and proper reception of the other’s gift of self.  On the contrary, lust is about taking rather than giving or receiving.  It is disordered and is about pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

How are we supposed to find the strength to live in such purity when we are surrounded by the sexually impure and when our culture is so accepting of lust as though it is normal or even good?  It is too much for us to do on our own strength and gratefully, we don’t have to.  Instead, when we turn the desire for intimacy and connection to the Lord and accept the infinite power of His love for us which is far more than we could hope for or imagine, we are filled to overflowing.

That might be difficult to believe if you have become immersed in impurity.  Instead of hiding in shame, expose your need to the Lord, who already knows and loves you more than you can believe.  Let Him know your need and use the occasions of temptations as reminders to you to ask for His help.  He will hear your prayer.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Growing Gratitude, Kindness

Uprooting Envy

Growing Gratitude Kindness. Envy is the vice of wanting something that isn’t mine.  Which is actually wanting something contrary to what the Lord knows will lead me to the joy, peace, and contentment He has for me.  When we don’t stay rooted and grounded in love like St. Paul tells us to in his letter to the Ephesians, we can quickly get off track and end up in such self-defeating and relationship-disrupting behavior.

King David gave into envy when he wanted Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, for his own.  He didn’t value her rightly by lusting for her and certainly didn’t value Uriah properly by sending him to the front lines in battle so that he would be killed.  Before that, he failed to stay rooted in God’s love for him and the knowledge that the same God who protected him from Goliath when he was a shepherd and provided for him to be an anointed king was providing for him.  Instead, he went outside of God’s boundaries seeking to provide for himself.

Another example from Scripture is the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.  He was so envious of what his brother had received and may stand to receive in the future that he refused to go inside and celebrate his brother’s return.  Because of his envy, he lacked gratitude for the safe return of his brother to a relationship with himself and his father.  That lack of gratitude led to a lack of kindness towards his brother and father.  We can see why gratitude and kindness go together as virtues.

The Lord has so made us for acts of virtue that our bodies respond positively to them.  In a very real sense, the wages of sin are death, and virtue leads to life.  When we show kindness, receive kindness, or even witness kindness, oxytocin (one of the four feel-good hormones that foster love, trust, and friendship) is released in our bodies.  Being grateful feels good.  It brings light, peace, and joy.  Being envious feels bad.  Our bodies cry out to tell us what we are and aren’t made for.

If you struggle with envy, take some time to praise and thank the Lord for the revelation of His beauty and power in whatever it is you value.  This will get you back to being grounded in the Lord’s love and valuing things rightly as flowing from Him for His glory.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Growing Humility Uprooting Pride

Growing Humility Uprooting Pride. Scripture tells us to choose the way of humility rather than pride.  It tells us that God favors the humble and humbles the proud.  Jesus even came to give us an example to follow.  His whole earthly life was, from first to last, a wondrous showcase of profound humility.  He emptied Himself and took on our humanity, was born in humble circumstances to poor parents, associated with the lowly, washed feet, and was buried in a borrowed grave.  We are told that is the example that we are to follow.  Yet, if we rely on our own ability to act with humility, we immediately fall into pride.  So, how is this to happen?

Fortunately, the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier!  We are called to respond to God’s grace, not to be the source.  When the Lord told Peter to put his nets out on the other side after he’d fished all night and caught nothing, it required an initial act of humility to respond to a carpenter’s advice about fishing.  Yet, when His grace-filled Peter’s nets to the point of tearing with 153 fish, he grew in humility, even falling at the Lord’s feet and asking Him to depart, confessing his own sinfulness.

When we experience suffering, powerlessness, and insults, we can turn in fear to reliance upon ourselves, but that will ultimately lead to anxiety, shame, and feelings of disconnection from the Lord, ourselves, and others.  That only fuels the vicious cycle as our fear increases and around and around we go.  However, if we respond to suffering by sending our roots more deeply into God’s love for us, it is readily apparent that He is the one to rely on, our hearts are lifted in gratitude to Him, and we experience a sense of intimacy with Him.

We can have confidence – literally being ‘with faith’ when that faith is in Him rather than ourselves, knowing that His power is able to do anything, even though frail instruments like ourselves.  He is all-powerful and loves us more deeply than we can ever imagine.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Growing Virtue and Uprooting Vice

Growing Virtue and Uprooting Vice. For the longest time, I would bristle when I would hear people talking about growing virtue and rooting out vice because so many times it sounded like something they were engineering.  I’m thoroughly convinced that growing in holiness is something I’m completely incapable of on my own, and I can easily get myself tied in a knot if I try.

I remember the Lord telling me once in prayer when pondering such a thing, “I don’t need your treatment plan.”  A therapist creates a treatment plan to work toward health with a client.  The Lord was letting me know in not so many words that He had a far better idea of what growth I needed and how to accomplish it.  It put me back in the spot of receiving from the Lord, which is a far better spot to be.  The Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier.  I’m not.

As we dig into the concepts of connection:  1. that we are chosen by the God of all creation to exist here now and are made to spend eternity with Him, 2. known more intimately by Him than we could ever know ourselves, 3. valued so totally by He who emptied Himself to redeem us and manifest the Father’s love for us, and 4. protected and provided for by the God of all creation, we are filled with such a sense of love, security, stability, and belonging that far surpasses anything we could ever hope for or imagine.  It is exactly that deep and abiding unearned love that flowers into a virtue when responded to.  If we try to do it on our own, it is an exercise in futility or even frustration.  If we do have any success, we can so easily end up being proud of our humility.

It is Jesus who makes us into a gift to the Father by the action of the Holy Spirit.  Of course, we are called to collaborate with that grace.  We must receive it first.  Regardless of if we are male or female, the soul is primarily receptive.  The Lord is the Bridegroom and is the initiator.  In receiving not just His love, but He who is Love, and responding in love to His love, we move from vice to virtue.

Let’s receive Him, His love, and take on His mind and heart of compassion towards ourselves; then, He will naturally flow through us to others.

May the Lord give you peace!

• Margaret

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Freedom from Pornography Part 2

Interview with Steve Pokorny

Freedom from Pornography Part 2 with Steve Pokorny, founder of Freedom Coaching and author of Redeemed Vision:  Setting the Blind Free from the Pornified Culture, sat down with me to finish our discussion.  Make sure you check out Part 1 from last week to hear how Steve himself ended up addicted to pornography.  It’s amazing how the Lord uses those who have struggled and suffered to minister to the very people who are struggling the way they once did.  He, indeed, is the Redeemer!  Find Steve’s site at Freedom-Coaching.net.

He lost his father and mother to cancer, so he was desperate to learn how to pray.  He began to have a relationship with the Lord but hadn’t yet opened to Him the area of pornography.  He moved in with his aunt and uncle.  He was highly involved in school but didn’t feel known for who he really was.  He was living in a sexual silence because he wasn’t being educated on human sexuality.  His identity was being chipped away at by his addiction to porn.

Steve highly recommends the document Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality.  It’s only by living in the truth that we are set free.  He was in the seminary in Cleveland, OH, for four years and still didn’t receive proper healthy sexual formation.

Steve met a girl he really came to care about, and his love was unrequited.  He tried to cope with the apparent rejection by way of pornography.  He discerned out of seminary, taught for a year, and then ended up at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.  The Lord broke into his life at a Festival of Praise at FUS.  He was coming to know the Lord’s love and his identity as God’s son.  The Father’s love broke in and changed his desire to lust after women to want to serve them.  He ended up backsliding and wondering if it that freedom had been a mirage. He ended up finding Theology of the Body but living with the struggle towards porn.

Steve shared that he went through a week of intensive trauma therapy with me and that through the experience, the Lord set him free from the guilt and shame he was carrying and from the addiction to pornography.

No matter your struggles, the Lord can set you free and redeem the pain for your good and His glory.  There is nothing beyond His reach.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Freedom From Pornography

Part 1 Interview with Steve Pokorny

Freedom From Pornography with Steve Pokorny, founder of Freedom Coaching (Freedom-Coaching.net), joined me to discuss his mission to set the captives free from the addiction to pornography.  He grew up in Cleveland, OH, suburbs.  His father was a Vietnam veteran and suffered from its lingering effects, particularly depression.  He was an attorney and worked long hours.  He got caught in a get-rich-quick scheme, and, to his knowledge, he had lost a lot of money, after which he attempted suicide.  He did not complete the suicide attempt but remained without short-term memory because of the damage.  He was very impaired and was moved to a nursing home.  This left Steve very disconnected from his dad from the time he was five years old.  This drastically interrupted his ability to connect to his father.

One day as a boy of 12 years old, he found in the middle of his street images of hard-core pornography.  He had had no education about sexuality or education.  He shared with other kids about the images and ended up selling them images to his friend for $20.  For Steve as a boy, there was a space in him that created a perfect storm.  Lust, anger, control, and fear were layered within him.  He points out that lust leads to violence, as many serial killers start out with exposure to porn.  It also leads to the violence of abortion.

For Steve, pornography was a poisoned apple that was dropped into an area of hunger.  He was thirsting to have his masculinity affirmed.  He felt fatherless, even though he had some good men in his life.  He was searching for a connection and was left to settle for a counterfeit.  This worsened things even more by filling him with shame.  The shame left him afraid and hiding from the people he needed.  Dr. Vincent Felitti once said in a talk I heard, “You can never get enough of what almost works.”  He didn’t feel comfortable in his own skin and found it difficult to connect with others.  He ended up feeling pain or numbness with feelings of guilt, shame, and self-hatred.

Make sure you turn in next week to hear Part 2 to hear how the Lord set Steve free and moved him into ministry to others!

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Suffering Is a Pain

Suffering Is a Pain. This is a topic that is always with us in this life!  As Catholics we often hear about the redemptive power of suffering.  How are we to do that in a way that is powerful and in a way where we collaborate with the grace the Lord is giving?  We know the saints suffered well and that is even before they were saints.  We can tend to forget they weren’t yet canonized when they were still alive.  What is the difference between suffering and just being in pain?

Suffering is the way we respond to pain.  We often get taught not to grumble, complain, become impatient, take it out on your neighbor, or self-medicate.  Yet, nature abhors a vacuum and it’s insufficient to hear what not to do.  We need to know what to do.

1. First, we need to acknowledge the suffering or frustration and not stuff it and then leave the emotions to come out sideways. In Jesus’ agony in the garden before His crucifixion, He didn’t deny or minimize what He was about to undergo, even though He knew how things were going to end and that He would rise in three days!  He still sweat blood.  He was real with the situation and was in touch with His emotions.  Emotions are energy that move us from or towards something and if we just stuff them, they can come out in a variety of unhealthy ways.

2. Secondly, we can consider how the Lord experienced the same type of suffering or greater. He suffered in many ways in His earthly life, even before His Passion.  He put up with frustration in dealing with the apostles as they bickered about who was the greatest, He was a sign of contradiction, rejected even for doing good, denied, betrayed, tortured, mocked, ridiculed, and put to death.

3. Next, we can unite our sufferings to His. That is so powerful.  The notion of atonement – being at one with Him can afford us an insight into the Lord’s own pain and what He endured for love of us.  Also, because He suffered in these ways, He is well acquainted with what we suffer.  I can be present to He who is present to me.

4. Then, we experience the intimacy of being seen into by Him as we see into what He suffered. When the pain goes away what is left is love.  Suffering hurts, is painful, is difficult.  Don’t beat yourself up for that or put pressure on yourself that suffering shouldn’t be difficult.  If it wasn’t so, it wouldn’t be suffering.  Yet, the Lord can transform every occasion of suffering into an occasion of intimacy with Him.  His compassionate love sustains us in the midst of the difficulty.

5. Finally, we do whatever good we are supposed to be doing out of the power of intimacy with the Lord. Suffering does NOT have to lead us to isolation, but through drawing closer to the Lord in the midst of it there is intimacy with the Lord. We are moved out of the isolation of pain into the intimacy of suffering with the Lord and then empowered by the union with Him and His Holy Spirit to imitate Him.  We are not made for isolation, but for connection.

Somehow through it all we are transformed from death to new life in Him!  He equips our crosses with that same transforming power of His Cross.

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Matter of Life and Death

Matter of Life and Death. In Scripture, we hear a lot about dying to ourselves.  We are commanded to do it and told it is essential for life.  So, what does that actually mean?  What is dying to ourselves?  Is there a value in suffering for the sake of suffering?  No!  The power and beauty of suffering come by enduring the pain and suffering of this life by joining it to the suffering of Christ.

As baptized members of His Body, we die with Him and rise with Him to know life.  In this way, death is active, not passive.  It’s staying connected to the Lord by actively and consciously uniting our pain to His.  We are called to die to sin and selfishness by embracing our crosses for the love of Him as He embraced the Cross for the love of us.  That union with Him – the Divine Indwelling of the Holy Trinity gives us the power to go through anything.

How are you planning to die today?  How am I planning to die today? – Rather than planning to please ourselves, we can plan how to let His Spirit and grace flow through us.  That’s how we can be conduits of grace rather than consumed with ourselves.  It allows us to become more and more transformed into Him.  We can suffer on our own, but in doing it in union with Jesus, we are able to grow into deeper spiritual maturity.

It’s more a matter of how we do what we do.  It doesn’t matter if we are called to a life of ministry.  Going the extra mile above and beyond the call of duty in whatever it is, we do we die to our plans and our convenience and are able to be Jesus to others in very simple and practical ways.

There’s a joy that comes from doing these things.  We are physically made for these things to feel good!  Oxytocin – one of the feel-good hormones – is released when we minister to others, are ministered to, or even witness someone else minister to another.

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!  Living to die to ourselves brings the deep joy for which we are made.  St. Francis of Assisi said that when we do these things, the second death will do us no harm.  We will already be fitted for Heaven!

How are we trying to die today?

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Don’t Believe the Lies

Don’t Believe the Lies. Margaret Vasquez’s Testimony. When Satan can get us to question God’s goodness and who He is as our Good Father and who we are as His beloved children, anything is possible in a really bad way.  It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.  It’s the tactic he used against Adam and Eve, and he tried it again when he tempted Jesus in the desert.  Satan is not the creator and he isn’t creative.  He does the same things over and over.  His desire is for disunity because Jesus longs that we be one, as He prayed at the Last Supper.  Satan wants to separate us from God and each other by causing division within our own minds and hearts.

Sometimes the painful circumstances of life tell us lies and when that happens often enough and from important people in our lives, we can fall into believing them.  The breakdown in connection to ourselves directly affects our relationship with God because, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “What is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.”  If our ‘mode’ becomes one of ‘I don’t belong’ or ‘I’m not lovable’, then we tend to interpret events and interactions with others in that light.  This even applies in terms of how we relate to the Lord.

I went through a lot of abuse in childhood and young adulthood – even from people in the Church.  The resulting disconnection with myself, the Lord, and others left me vulnerable to a same sex relationship and the pain and shame of it all made going to Church so painful that I stopped going for 6 years.  That caused even greater sense of disconnection and pain.  It was a vicious cycle until the Lord sovereignly broke in and reestablished my foundational identity as being chosen, known, valued, protected, and provided for by Him.  He completely removed all same sex attraction and showed me it was rooted in a lack of connection to myself.

Don’t believe the lie that it is how you were born and not something that can be healed.

The Lord said, “Behold, I make ALL things new.” – Revelation 21:5. Nothing is impossible to Him.

This is my testimony to His love, His power, His grace, His healing, and His infinite, unearned mercy in my life.

Thanks for listening.  To God be the glory!

• Margaret

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Repentance Those Hurt by Church Leadership

Repentance is important, especially if you have been hurt by church leaders. I was away from the Church for a number of years because of the abuse I suffered at the hands of Church leadership.  Maybe you or someone you love is in that same place in their walk.  During that time, annual programs welcomed Catholics back to the Church.  I felt that there was a step missing, that of acknowledging the hurt done by those in leadership.  This is what we extend to you today.

If someone in Church leadership offended you, I am so sorry for your pain or abuse.  Those in Church leadership have every bit as much of an ability to hurt people as anyone does.  People are still people, no matter what title they hold.  However, because of the roles they hold, those in leadership can wound us in the depths of our person, in the core of our spirituality.  They are meant to represent the Lord, so it can almost make us feel like God abused us, as crazy as that may sound.  Sometimes, even sacred art, music, and sacramentals can become triggering.

Repentance Heals

On behalf of the Church, Fr. David Tickerhoof and I acknowledge the pain and hurt you’ve endured and ask for your forgiveness.  We don’t want you to remain separated anymore.  No matter how little you might think you are, you are a crucial part of the Body of Christ, and we need you!  No member of the human body is disposable, and nor are you.  You are an essential member.

You actually have a special ability to minister to others who have experienced pain.  I remember something the Lord told me at one point when I was suffering because of those in the Church.  He said, “Everything you want from the Church, I want you to be that for the Church.”  It immediately refocused me on the Good Shepherd rather than the sheep.  Please return and extend that compassion you deserve to receive to those who are in the spot you were.

This Easter, we invite you to consider coming back to the Lord.  It doesn’t mean the hurtful way you were treated is right or doesn’t matter.  I invite you to think of that as our Good Father bringing you back into His House.  He can restore.  He does make ALL things new.

May the Lord give you peace!

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Our Identity in christ

Our identity is crucial to our personal wholeness and growth in holiness.  It’s a buzzword these days in secular society.  No matter who we are, how we live is going to flow from our identity.  Another way to say it is we behave according to who we believe we are.  For this very reason, the foundation of our human and spiritual integration is tied to who God is.  We have to get more foundational than the fact that we are his sons and daughters.  We must know what He’s like!

These days genealogy and DNA testing are ways that people might choose to come to know more about their ancestors.  Learning more about the people they came from sheds light on how they see and understand themselves.  How much more does it reveal to us who we are by coming to know who God is?!  After all, we are made in His image and likeness, as Genesis tells us.  God is good and not only good, but it’s impossible to conceive of any greater good than He!

Parents image God for us, yet none of us have had perfect parents.  So, many times we have somewhat of a less-than-perfect picture.   Sometimes it can be quite difficult to know in our hearts that God is deeply good.  When we’ve experienced hurt at the hands of parents or those in authority, it can color how we see Him.  That can happen even without our conscious awareness and even when we are very educated in Theology or are clerics or religious.

One thing I have found helpful and often recommend to clients is to consider ways our parents behaved that were painful and prayerfully.  Make a list.  Mom was like this, but God is like that.  Dad was like this, but God is like that.  Perhaps you’ll have a list of a number of things from both parents.   Seeing down on paper how differently God is and acts toward us from hurtful ways we experienced authority can be an important first step in untwisting confusing messages we took on as children or young adults.

From there, we consider who He is and who we are to Him.  Sometimes give this a try.  Sit in God’s presence and imagine Jesus there with you praying for the Our Father together.  It’s astounding to think that when I pray “Our” Father, I am praying with Jesus to God, His Father and my Father. Let’s take some time to let that reality pierce our hearts and ground us in our identity as a son or daughter of a GOOD Father!

May the Lord give you peace!

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Into the Desert with Jesus

The Scriptural basis for the 40 days of Lent is found in Jesus’ own going into the desert for 40 days after His baptism.  In Matthew 4:1-11 we read (on air).

The devil tempted the Lord toward sensual satisfaction, testing the Father, power, and popularity.  These are all ways in which we experience temptation, as well.  We have Jesus’ example to follow and can learn something about Satan’s tactics in this.

Satan approached the Lord after He had fasted for 40 days and was hungry.  How vulnerable are we when we are worn down?  We can expect to be hit with temptations during difficult times and pay special attention to discerning the Lord’s voice at such times, praying, taking authority in Jesus’ Name over anything not of the Lord, and going to brothers and sisters in the Lord to get additional discernment.

It’s particularly interesting that the first two temptations from Satan start with “If you are the Son of God.”  Satan isn’t creative.  He does the same old thing to us!  He starts by getting us to question who God is to us and who we are to Him.  When we move away from the truth of our identity in the Lord, we are capable of anything bad thing.  We need to keep the fundamental truth of who we are to the Father always before our eyes, along with His provision for us, His protection over us, and His Lordship.

May we journey with Jesus into the desert this Lent, knowing He was tempted like us in every way but did not sin.  May we always stay rooted in our identity in who we are to the Father!

May the Lord give you peace!

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Lent A New Springtime

If you find the time of Lent to be one of heaviness and drudgery, this is the podcast for you!  Fr. David and I discuss the beauty of new life that comes from eliminating the distractions and dissipation of life and allowing our hearts to be attracted to the Lord.  Jesus, Himself went into the desert to be with His Father in prayer.  Each year the Church gives us these 40 days to focus more intently and intentionally on our relationship with the Lord.  While the Lenten obligations for Catholics are abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and the Fridays throughout Lent and fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, there is so much more available to us.

The three pillars of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.   These are components of the normal Christian life, and yet we focus through them on the Lord in a special way during this season.  Why?  The why is Love.  We are all called to holiness, which is being loved by God, who is love, and being in love with Love.  These three areas help us to quiet the competing noise in our life so we can hear the Lord’s call more clearly and follow Him more closely.

Through prayer, we take time away to speak and listen to Him.  Try finding fresh ways to spend time with the Lord.  Perhaps go for a walk with Him or clear out an area of your house and make it a sacred space with devotional materials, a journal, Scripture, and a blessed candle.  Having a designated area for a designated purpose can help us focus and avoid distractions.   Fasting from excesses of pleasure and noise can help us become more aware of the Lord as the satisfaction of our souls.  We can focus on what we’re giving up, or we can ask the Lord to transform the hunger of our appetite into a hunger for Him.  Through almsgiving, we extend to the Lord, ourselves, and others the same compassion Jesus shows us.

Lent is a beautiful time of new life.  We are heading through these 40 days to the high Holy Days of the Triduum.  We are heading to Calvary with the Lord, and He is with us in our own sufferings and deaths.  Let’s embrace this great opportunity with joy and draw through it more closely to His Sacred Heart!

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret Vasquez, LPCC-S, CTT, CITTI

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Counseling vs Coaching

What’s the Difference Between Counseling and Coaching?

Counseling vs Coaching. They are both used in regard to wellness these days.  So, what’s the difference between them?  How do I know which one is right for me?  A governing body regulates counseling in each of the United States.  The laws and regulations of the counselor boards state that counseling is the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders.  Counselors are required to have a master’s degree in counseling and to have been supervised for many hours along the way so that they have proven to be equipped to provide that service.  Counseling addresses a place of ‘stuckness,’ if not a place of great pain that might cause us to be stuck in certain unhealthy behaviors and painful emotions.

Coaching, on the other hand, is when we need a lesser degree of guidance.  Perhaps there are areas we’d like to improve, and we could use a voice of experience and some tips, tools, and strategies to improve our ways of relating to moving into greater freedom, joy, and peace.  Just as we might seek out a coach if we are trying to improve an athletic skill, but a doctor if we are suffering from pain that prevents healthy activity, so a coach can provide tools a person can use. Still, a therapist/counselor would be the one to provide the equivalent of medical care for an emotional wound.

Within the world of counseling, nowadays, people are more and more familiar with trauma therapy.  There are many different methods of approaching trauma with varying degrees of results.  If you are looking for a trauma therapist, I encourage you to ask the therapist for testimonials from clients they’ve treated.  Just because someone treats a certain problem does not necessarily mean they do so effectively.  You have a right to be an informed consumer, even as a client.  Intensive trauma therapy is a way of making greater gains in the therapeutic process because of the momentum that an extended number of therapy hours can provide.  That is, you can get on to the place of peace, joy, and freedom faster by putting in the time upfront.

Suppose a therapist is a Christian counselor or a Catholic counselor. In that case, you can open the areas where your spiritual life might be stuck because of emotionally painful experiences. Still, it is never the role of that counselor to force or pressure you into their religious views.  Counselors of faith ought to always receive you with compassion regardless of your spiritual views.

The Lord wants His people free.  Don’t be afraid to seek the freedom, joy, and peace He has for you!

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Response to Powerlessness ~ Don’t Waste  Suffering!

Our response to powerlessness. There’s a pattern I’ve noticed as a therapist and experienced personally.  It’s a deeply frustrating pattern, but it’s quite typical for us as human beings.  When we experience the suffering that comes from being powerless in painful circumstances, the natural fear we can tend to feel so often leads us to a place of self-reliance.  However, because many situations we do not have the power to affect, this self-reliance can surely fail, leading to an experience of inadequacy that we couldn’t take care of the situation or fix the situation.

When we feel inadequate, the natural result is a sense of shame which leads to hiding and isolating ourselves from others and even the Lord, just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden.  Ultimately, we find ourselves disconnected, even disconnected from who we truly are in the Lord.

Contrast this with when we experience powerlessness and experience those feelings of fear but instead choose to counterbalance the information that the situation is fear-provoking with the fact that God loves us more deeply and profoundly than we can ever fathom! If we go from that fact to the truth of who He is to us as our Good Father and who we are as His beloved daughter or son, then we can trust in and rely on Him.

In that place – knowing that He is with us always and will never leave us orphaned, we experience intimacy with Him.  We are truly seen by Him, held precious by Him, and protected and provided for by Him in eternity, even if our life in this world is suffering.  We see Him, who He is, and come to value Him for who He is regardless of the outcome of the circumstances.  He is the truest, richest reward.  This intimacy leads us to gratitude and a deepening of connection to Him, to ourselves, and to others, as well.  This fuels the cycle of trusting in Him more readily in the future.

Scripture tells us not to fear.  So, what are we to do instead?  How can we choose not to fear when circumstances are frightening?  Counterbalance the information of that emotion of fear with the truth of God’s love, who He is to you as your Good, Good Father, and who you are to Him as His beloved child.  In this way, all suffering is an occasion for intimacy with the Lord.

Don’t waste suffering!

May the Lord give you peace!

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Would you believe that the key to marriage isn’t your relationship with your spouse?  Do you know that we all have the same primary vocation regardless of our state in life?  The truth is that the key to marriage is that our primary vocation is that of union with the Lord!  It’s true!  Monks, hermits, religious, clergy, and married people all share the same call to holiness!  So, if you are married that means you are called to union with the Lord first and foremost and in the living out of that you receive what you need to live your vocation of marriage with an earthly spouse.

Only the Lord is infinite and in Him our needs to be chosen, intimately known, perfectly valued, protected, and provided for are superabundantly fulfilled.  If we aren’t going to Him to receive the fulfilment of those needs, we will be running on empty and turning to our spouse to fill us.  What if they are running on empty, as well?  Then we are setup for frustration, conflict, and failure.  If we look to them to satisfy us instead of the Lord, we are looking to make an idol of them.

Where relationships usually breakdown is in our relationship to ourselves.  We read Scripture or spiritual reading, listen to homilies, or talks about the Lord and how He sees us and then we go and relate to ourselves in ways that fly in the face of the fact that we are precious, loved, and have inherent dignity.  Then, our relationships to others become really weighty – much weightier than they ought to be – because we are looking for our spouse to tell us enough truth about ourselves to counterbalance the erroneous ways we treat ourselves.

Start each day – even if it’s just taking 5 minutes – turn to the Lord and open those needs of knowing you are chosen by Him, intimately known by Him, that you have more worth in Him than you can begin to imagine, that you are protected and provided for by Him and ask Him to help you relate to yourself in a way that is consistent with those truths.  Starting from a place of fullness, then relate to your spouse and see what changes.

May the Lord give you peace!

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Acts 1:8 “But, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you…”

Do you feel like you need power?  The Lord promises it to us through His Spirit coming upon us!

If you grew up like many of us did without exposure to such language or experience, you might be wondering just what the baptism in the Holy Spirit is and how it differs from the sacrament of Baptism.  We receive the indwelling of the Holy Trinity at our baptism.  I heard an analogy once from Fr. Hal Cohen, S.J. who had a glass of milk and squirted chocolate syrup into the glass – a big, heavy dose of chocolate syrup – which collected at the bottom of the glass.  He said that was like receiving the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity at Baptism.  Then, he stuck a spoon into the glass and stirred it vigorously until the chocolate was thoroughly mixed with the milk.  It was no longer milk with chocolate syrup.  It was now chocolate milk.  He said that mixing/transforming process was like the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is such a precious and much needed gift of the Father and the Son.  He is generated by the love between them and sent to us to bring us into Their very life.  It’s the whole point of this life, and all eternity for that matter.  The purpose of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is to equip us with the spiritual gifts we need to live a supernatural life of grace with a deeper experience of the Lord along with gifts for ministry to others, as well.

Many times, the experience of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit brings people to a deeper conversion, greater sense of intimacy with the Lord, hunger for prayer, and the Scriptures and the Mass really take on a deeper meaning and brings us into a more profound realization of the fact that this life is passing away and we have a much more beautiful home that awaits us.

If you are longing for more in your relationship with the Lord, ask Him to stir up within you the Holy Spirit who came to dwell in you at your baptism.  Perhaps you may want to check out prayer groups in your area or the Encounter school to get plugged into others who are seeking the Lord in the same way.

Thank you, Lord, for the great gift of Your Holy Spirt!  Come Holy Spirit!!!

May the Lord give you peace!

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In Mary’s Magnificat she declares her own lowliness and rejoices in the fact that the Lord raises up the lowly.  She sees and openly acknowledges her own littleness.  That’s not a false humility.  She is in touch with the reality of who she is before God.  She also lays out a stark contrast between how God responds to the lowly as compared with how He responds to the lowly.  She told her cousin Elizabeth and continues to tell us that he looked with favor on her as His lowly servant, has mercy on those who fear Him, scatters the proud, casts down the powerful, while He lifts up the lowly, fills them with good things, comes to their help, and remembers His promises (Luke 1:46-55).

When we think that the Lord chose her to form Him as a baby and a child, it is striking to consider.  He must have intentionally wanted the human example of a mother with a humble heart who doesn’t look to be mighty, but to acknowledge the Lord’s power.  We know that humble is how Jesus described His own heart (Matthew 11:29).

When we consider that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), we have no choice but to consider that God is humble.  Can that be?  That concept can give us pause at first, but then we call to mind that Jesus “emptied Himself” (Philippians 2:7) and left His throne and took on our humanity, even becomes Food for us in the Eucharist, and subjected Himself to such a horrific death at the hands of His creatures.  St. Francis of Assisi spoke to his followers about “the humility of God”, particularly in the Eucharist.  He was really moved by it and we saw how he imitated that humility in embracing and ministering to the lepers.

In Fr. Rick Martignetti’s book, Perfect Love he references St. Bonaventure telling St Clare and her sisters that patience is the hallmark of humility.  He points out Mary’s patience in not bombarding Gabriel with a thousand questions, even though her life might be on the line by being an unwed mother at that time.  Knowing that God would be the father of Jesus was enough of an answer and she could wait patiently for God to provide in His way and in His time.

The angel Gabriel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you (Luke 1:35)”.  Are we willing to be overshadowed?  Our humanity can really bristle at that.  How much anxiety can we lose and how much freedom, peace, and joy can we gain when we embrace our lowliness and rely on the Lord to lift us up rather than trying to do it ourselves.

May the Lord give you peace!

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God’s love is key to the spiritual life.  As we’ve discussed in the past couple of shows, He loves us infinitely and intimately and sent Jesus to reveal His love for us, to make it manifest to us in a real way we could see through the incarnation we celebrate at Christmas.  Yet, despite this fact, many times we can struggle to cling to this notion and sometimes the experience of it is distant.

In simple terms, we can divide the blocks to God’s love into two categories, internal and external blocks.  Predominately, the external blocks tend to be associated with a lack of human maturity and the internal are related to a lack of spiritual maturity.

Examples of external blocks can be things like preoccupation with worldly concerns, and lack of focus on the true purpose of this life.  We can be so consumed with coming and going to and from work and tasks of the day that we forget the goal of this life is really about our relationship with the Lord.  It can be easy to forget Him if we don’t make a concerted effort to keep Him central.  He is invisible and doesn’t often speak audibly, so it requires tuning our senses to a spiritual setting, like switching a radio from one of human transmission to spiritual transmission.  As we learn to see Him in the tasks, relationships, and gifts of the day, to hear Him in the leading of His “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-13) we grow in human maturity and become more available to the experience of Him being Personally present to us in the day-to-day.

Internal blocks can come from woundedness that causes us to doubt His goodness or the fact that He loves us deeply and cares for us intimately.  He wants to touch every area of our lives and our being and draw us into union with Himself.  Hurtful messages we received from painful relationships or situations can leave us doubting this or walled off in a misguided attempt at self-protection.  We may also have a lack of appreciation for God’s love.  We might assume the time where God was involved with people ended after the Acts of the Apostles or is only in the rare exception like in the lives of canonized saints.  The truth is that the Lord’s love is always present to us and He longs to bring us ever more deeply to a place of living in the full joy, and peace of that reality.

May the Lord give you peace!

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The Incarnation of Jesus is so crucial.  Jesus is God’s love made manifest to the world!  For this reason, St. Francis of Assisi saw Christmas as the highest of the feast days!  When he made his conversion, God started to work in him in new and beautiful ways and right at the heart of it was Jesus coming as man.  St. Francis was so touched by the humility of Jesus in coming like one of us that he set up the first nativity scene.  He reasoned that it would move people’s hearts to see this with their own eyes.  He set up a live nativity scene.

Blessed John Duns Scotus, a 13^th century Franciscan philosopher, was convinced that love is central and that even if man had never sinned, God the Father still would have sent Jesus to manifest the Father’s love for us.  So, Jesus coming to reveal the love of the Father is the reason for the season of Christmas.  It’s fundamentally important for us to not just know what we’re doing, but why we’re doing what we’re doing.  Looking at why the Father sent Jesus is just as important.  When we understand God’s purpose in sending Jesus, we gain critical insight into the Father and the Son and who we are to them and who they are to us.

Christmas has become so secularized, but Christmas is really about God’s love.  Yes, Jesus came to save us from our sin, but the reason WHY is because of God’s deep and intimate love for each one of us.  All of creation is born out of the love of God!  Jesus does save us from our sin, but the fact that He came out of the depth of His saves us from the attraction to sin…His love is so much more attractive!  Jesus opens up the life of the Father and work of the Spirit and the life of the Holy Trinity.  Out of that intimacy revealed in the Incarnation of Jesus a life of holiness flows and is the transformative power of our lives.  Cooperating with – receiving and responding to His love – is the Kingdom of Heaven that is at hand!

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Identity is at the core of human and spiritual integration.  It’s key to us being able to act from a mature human place and to being spiritually mature.  There are so many things that clamor for our identity and that some gravitate towards – being a member of a certain club, or organization, having wealth or affluence, being a member or fan of a team.  While none of these things are bad, they are NOT where our identity lies and provide no basis for our identity.

I was listening to a podcast recently by the founder of the South African Satanic Church who recently converted to Christianity because of a profound experience of Jesus.  He said that one of the things people are told when they join the satanic church is that they were rejected in other experiences in life because they were meant to be satanists.  Ugh!  Can you see the battle for their identity?  We see the same thing in our culture where so many suffer and struggle for their identity from their sexual brokenness.  It’s so heartbreaking because, again, this is not where our identity lies.  St. Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).  He’s laying out where our foundational identity is – in the Lord!

We even see in Jesus’ life how essential His identity was and how at the beginning of His public ministry the Father publicly announced His identity as His Beloved Son in whom He was well pleased.  Jesus’ identity as the Beloved Son of the Father was crucial to His life as both human and Divine.  At the foot of the Cross we see Our Lady, St. John the Beloved, and Mary Magdalene, all of whom had come to know their identity as loved by God in a particular way.

When our identity is founded in who we are as God’s children, we gain courage and confidence.  Courage by definition means to take heart.  It’s a big difference if we’re taking our own heart or the Lord’s Heart!  Confidence means acting with faith.  How essential that we act with faith in Him rather than faith in ourselves!  That’s a game changer!

Our identity IS in being God’s children!  He who is all good, loving, wise, knowing, powerful and Creator of all that is calls us His own children, His own sons and daughters.  Being His child means there’s a relationship.  It’s not just a role or title, but refers to the relationship He brings us into by His Spirit of Adoption.  Knowing we are chosen, known, valued, protected, and provided for by HIM  – THAT is where our identity lies.

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In the last podcast with Coach Kelly Herrmann, there was something she shared about how she has approached coaching over the years that helped her align her actions with her beliefs.  I was really struck by it, and it has been a gift to me to distill those principles out of the arena of athletics (pun intended) and this is something that applies to all of us regardless of if we are athletes, coaches, parents, students, professionals, single, married, religious sisters, brothers, or clergy.

What Coach shared was that she realized she had to do was to develop her philosophy of coaching based on the truth and align her goals with those priorities.  These are steps we can all take to help make our lives more meaningful, purposeful, consistent, and integrated.  Without doing so, we can tend to relegate spiritual things to Sunday or Church.  By being conscious and intentional about establishing our priorities so as to lead to our goals which are consistent with our philosophy founded and grounded in the Truth.

In doing this, I really see the most foundational truth of life is the TRUTH – who is the person of Jesus.  Blessed John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan philosopher in the 13^th century said that Jesus came to manifest the love of God the Father.  He also taught that the greatest thing we can do is to choose to love the good and God is the greatest good.  This being my philosophy lays out the goals 1) receiving God’s love, 2) loving Him as the greatest good, 3) loving what He loves (me and others) and 4) affirming the good.  I’ve found that affirming the good in others, especially when they’re being difficult or challenging is naturally before me because I know in a very thought-out way it aligns with my philosophy and the truth of who God is and who I am in Him.

I’ve found this to be a very helpful decision-making tool and helps me keep my behaviors in line with my beliefs.  I challenge you to pray about it and consider doing it.  I hope it blesses you as much as it has blessed me.

May the Lord give you peace!

Margaret

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Join me for the final episode in this series with Coach Herrmann and I discuss the role sports can play in character formation!

Coach Kelly Herrmann – now a wife, mom, grandma, health coach, author, and speaker was a fixture in sports at Franciscan University of Steubenville for decades.  Having given up a full ride to play division one basketball, she attended FUS and was athletic director, head coach of women’s basketball and volleyball and intramural coordinator.  She has refereed, umpired, announced games, coached little league soccer, run sports summer camps, and mentored other coaches.  She’s a wealth of experience and knowledge and comes from a faithfully Catholic perspective.

Coach explains that the key to integrating faith in sports is to have a clear philosophy based on truth.  Then have clear priorities based on that philosophy.  Coach Kelly shares about a time when Franciscan men’s and women’s basketball teams traveled together.  On the bus the two teams sat separated by the coaches in the middle.  One of her players came to her and asked if they could mix in with the men’s team on the way back from the game for the sake of bonding with the men’s team.  She easily denied the request and was able to explain to her player that bonding with the men’s team wasn’t a priority, whereas study, rest, bonding with her fellow teammates were priorities.  She was able to quickly make a good decision and explain it with a solid basis to the player who was able to accept it.  It wasn’t an arbitrary refusal.  There was a purpose behind it.  Priorities serve the goal and move you in the direction of reaching those goals.  Set and stay faithful to your priorities.

As Christians, evangelizing is always a goal – seeking to witness faith everywhere.  There are situations in sports that force a coach and player to be countercultural.  A few examples are things like controlling one’s temper, language, service in relationships, and modesty.  If you know your priorities, you can easily come to the right decision in such situations regardless of the zeitgeist of the day.

Some practical steps you can implement today are to define your philosophy of play and coaching based on St. John Paul II’s injunction to follow the Divine Master in everything. Based on that, define your priorities, then integrate those priorities throughout your approach to sports.  Finally, don’t be afraid to be countercultural!  BE BOLD!

To connect with Coach Kelly Herrmann for speaking engagements, she can be reached at kherrmanniam@outlook.com.

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Join me as Coach Herrmann and I discuss the role sports can play in character formation!

Coach Kelly Herrmann – now a wife, mom, grandma, health coach, author, and speaker was a fixture in sports at Franciscan University of Steubenville for decades.  Having given up a full ride to play division one basketball, she attended FUS and was athletic director, head coach of women’s basketball and volleyball and intramural coordinator.  She has refereed, umpired, announced games, coached little league soccer, run sports summer camps, and mentored other coaches.  She’s a wealth of experience and knowledge and comes from a faithfully Catholic perspective.

I asked Coach:

1. Are there specific character/faith lessons you look to teach through the season?

Some of the many character and faith lessons we can easily glean from faithfully coached and approached athletics are hard work, personal investment, dedicated commitment, right/honest/and charitable communication, servanthood, humility, unity, and modesty.  Sports are a microcosm of life and so much can be taught through them because they really test the mettle of which a person is made.

2. Can sports be used for character formation even with children?

Because of developmental differences associated with age, the lessons that can be taught are different, but sports are quite useful in character formation – even with children.  Some of the many lessons first learned through sports by children are self-control, how to handle disappointment, delaying gratification and celebrating the giftedness and skills of others.

3. If so, are the lessons different depending on the ages of the athletes – little league, middle school, college, etc.?

The many lessons learned through sports are the same in type but differ in degree and can really be of great benefit to athletes of any age, especially when coached from an authentic and consistent faith perspective.  It’s essential that a coach know their own priorities as they coach and use the process of practice and play to reinforce the main priority of our lives – growth into the fullness of who we are called to be in Christ.

To connect with Coach Kelly Herrmann for speaking engagements, she can be reached at kherrmanniam@outlook.com.

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Meet Coach Kelly Herrmann – Faith Formation in Athletics

Today, I’m joined by Kelly who I’ve known for about 30 years.  She’s coached, refereed, umpired for decades in sports of all types and is now a wife, mother, grandmother, and health coach, author and speaker. Kelly has a passion for forming athletes in faith and spirituality and really integrating the two. She grew up on a dairy farm in Michigan and played basketball in the upstairs of their hay barn through the winter. She was living the student athlete life, doing the scorebook, coaching junior high leagues, announcing games even in high school and was truly involved in every aspect of sports year-round.

Kelly gave up a full ride to play division one sports to attend Franciscan University of Steubenville back in the 1980s for the sake of being in a place of faith formation.  She had three older siblings who attended FUS and having visited many times.  She had visited a lot and felt a certain fulfillment at the university in the people, the atmosphere, and the faith culture.  Even though early on she had protested coming to Franciscan, she realized it was the place where she could become more of who the Lord created her to be.  While it was difficult to give up the dream of being a college basketball player, Kelly got deeply involved in intramurals and never regretted making that choice.

Focusing on doing rather than being is a trap we can all fall into but keeping the Lord the priority is essential to developing a faithfully Catholic athletic environment.  What is the most important thing? Is winning everything?  No.  What we want to be saying to our kids is “how was your game?”  How did you do?  How did you play?”.  We play to win because the virtue of magnanimity calls us to do our very best! God wants us to strive and do our best, but that doesn’t always result in winning.  The process of day-to-day dedication and growth is the real core.

We discuss forming faith through athletics – the topic addressed in a chapter Kelly authored in the book Coach Them Well with St. Mary’s Press.

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The Sacrament of Reconciliation, what we as Catholics commonly refer to as Confession, is a great and powerful occasion for grace and yet sometimes we hesitate to go out of fear, shame, and embarrassment.  Margaret discusses the sacrament with Fr. David in his role as a priest of over 55 years.

Confession is a beautiful gift of healing that brings about an immediate change.  Because we have an ongoing relationship with the Lord, we have immediate access to healing and forgiveness right away by turning to the Lord in repentance, even before we go to the sacrament of confession.  This sacrament has a bigger dimension to it because we are in relationship with ourselves, the Lord, and others.  Confession is an occasion of personal healing, forgiveness, transformation, and mercy.  It makes amends and restores us to right relationship with ourselves and the community because we don’t just sin against ourselves, but others, as well.  We receive from the Lord through the power of His death and resurrection, healing, mercy, and compassion.

Question:  Does the priest think poorly of us when we confess our sins to him?

Answer:  Priests go to confession themselves and have to deal with the same human experience of sinfulness, guilt, and shame.  They understand that sense of apprehension.

Question:  How is it for you, Fr. David, as a priest?  Do you think those confessing their sins are horrible?

Answer:  No.  As priests we are to put people at ease and create a context of mercy.  The priest is not the judge, he is the pastor.  God is the judge, forgiver, and healer.  As priests, we are always to help people get over their fears, and hesitation.  The priest should be able to help you set that aside and open to the healing mercy of God.  If priests don’t do so they are violating who they are as ministers.

Question:  What is the seal of confession?

Answer:  The priest, under no condition, can reveal what is shared in confession and that is absolute.  He can’t even say anything to that person themselves about what he confessed without getting his permission.

Question:  When you see the penitent again do you think about their sins?

Answer:  There is often a divine grace of forgetfulness so that priests many times don’t even remember what was told to them.

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Self-forgiveness is highly important to mental health and spiritual growth.  If we don’t have it, we can stay stymied and even spiral downwards in our relationships to ourselves, God, and others.  Sometimes, we are hard on ourselves out of fear of failing even worse if we ‘let ourselves off the hook’.  However, it has the opposite effect and leads us away from a healthy and holy future.

Sometimes, people are stuck because of a lack of self-worth.  First, we need to receive the gift of forgiveness from God, our Father.  By receiving that from the Lord, then we need to internalize that stance and the mind of Christ toward ourselves.  Without this, we can stay blocked and stuck in our lives.

Many times, we can be shocked by how we fell. It can seem like we’re trying to hold ourselves to a higher standard, but it’s fundamentally a mindset of pride.  We might be surprised by our behavior, but the Lord who is all-knowing is not surprised.  It can be helpful to recall times of experiencing the Lord’s closeness prior to falling and recognizing that He foreknew that we were going to fail.

At its root unforgiveness toward ourselves changes our mode of operation to one of not being lovable and then we relate to others out of that mode – be it to the Lord, to ourselves, or to others.  We tend to project our own estimation of ourselves onto the Lord and others.  That can really skew our perception of others and put us in an impenetrable fortress of self-hatred.  Rather than achieving the goal of holding ourselves to a higher standard, we can so thoroughly discourage ourselves that we don’t even want to engage with the Lord in a relationship.  It can set us up for failure.  When we open to the grace of the Lord and receive His forgiveness, we can gain spiritual freedom.

In Matthew 7:1 and again Luke 6, the Lord tells us not to judge.  He doesn’t say not to judge others, but not to judge.  Judging is beyond our wisdom and insight.  We don’t understand what makes us tick the way the Lord does and He alone has the ability to do so rightly.  Blessed Julian of Norwich said, “God sees sin as pain in us.”  When we see sin as coming from pain, we are able to look at it, acknowledge it, repent of it, and receive the great gift of forgiveness.

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Most people don’t receive formation in prayer.  We don’t get taught how to pray and so it can be difficult to pray unless it is a structured activity.  So, we can tend to look to fill the time with formal prayers and journaling.  What is the difference between prayers and prayer?

Prayer isn’t just ‘caught’ it needs to be ‘taught’.  Prayer is based on the Lord’s grace and so it is a gift.  People can have a difficulty with a prayer time because we’re used to projects and don’t know how to sit still.  We can default to prayers someone else made.  Prayer is our relationship with the Lord and communicating heart to Heart with Him.

How do we do that?  A good place to start is simply being available to the Lord.  We don’t have to generate holy feelings or thoughts.  Simply being present to He who is present to us.  Being available means being ready and not preoccupied with other things.  It’s simply holding space for the Lord.

From there, we surrender our ideas and agendas, understanding the Lord wants prayer more than we do because He longs for relationship with us.  What does surrender mean?  It’s giving up our plans and our preconceived ideas of what needs to happen. He is the initiator and is all-wise and all-loving.

In His presence, we converse with Him which entails sharing with Him and listening to Him.  He can speak to our hearts by bringing certain thoughts and senses to us.  He is alive and well and is a good communicator!  We can ask Him for what He wants us to know and to lead us.  This communion leads us to union with Him.

Practically, that can look like using the Scripture or spiritual reading as jumping off points if we stop at the points where we find our spirit particularly touched and open ourselves to more of His work of grace in those areas.

So, we start by being available to the Lord, surrendering our agendas, and then moving from the words of prayers into being attentive to grace when our hearts are moved by particular notions, concepts, and images.

Ephesians 3:14 and following.

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Romans 14:7 says that we don’t live or die for ourselves, whether we live or die we are the Lord’s.  The Scriptures dismantle the illusion that life is our own.  The language can be used, “have you accepted God into your life” and yet it isn’t my life.  When we zoom out and really look at the whole person, we realize this is God’s life we participate in.  He is the initiator and orchestrator.  Keeping in mind that this life is the Lord’s gives us the proper perspective.

We can come up with our own plans and ask the Lord to bless them or we can submit ourselves to Him surrendering to His activity within us and His leading.  When we are baptized in Him, we are baptized into His life.  This is all a process of deeper conversion and transformation.  Fundamentally, we can seek a position of control, or surrender to the Lord’s omnipotence and give ourselves over to His will.

Fr. David shares about how he experienced the Lord telling him he was running his own life and asked him to let the Lord Himself run his life.  The repentance and conversion thus led Fr. David to drastically changed his life.

When we realize this is really the Lord’s life in which we participate it really calls us on beyond not doing the things on the naughty list to an ever-deeper experience of surrender.  In this way, we radically realize there is always more of God, deeper union into which we are called, and we no longer have the tendency to evaluate ourselves as better than our neighbor because we aren’t drinking, having illicit relationships, acting out of anger, and the like.  Rather, we are continually called on to continual growth in intimacy with the Lord.  This keeps life fresh because there is always more and He makes all things new.

Living as though the Lord is in our lives rather than us in His life, we can tend to compartmentalize spirituality.  Recognizing that we are in God’s life disposes us to incarnate Him to the world.

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The true self is who we really are – made in the image and likeness of God as His sons and daughters.  We’re in this place when we’re calm, compassionate and confident.  The true self responds out of love and is immutable.  The false self, by contrast responds from a place of fear.  In many places the Scriptures talk about putting off the old man and putting on the new man.  The false self is the old man, and the true self is the new man.

How do we do that?  How do we make that journey?  It’s a process of grace and coming to understand more and more who God is and what He asks of us.  We come to realize how powerless we are.  How we relate to our powerlessness is a process of conversion in relationship to God, ourselves, and others.  By receiving from the Lord and relating to ourselves as He does, we grow in our ability to reach out to others in compassion.  It’s a wonderful and challenging process.

Experiencing powerlessness is the moment of testing where we make the choice to respond in a sinful way or in a courageous way.  Powerlessness is scary and we can either be sent on a negative cycle toward disconnection or a positive cycle toward intimacy with the Lord.  When we see that there’s a positive direction we can move, it can really be a game changer that turns the painful bitterness to sweetness.  The same way sugar is the enemy when we’re on a diet, fear is the enemy in the spiritual life.  How do we handle the fear?

Powerlessness can lead us to pride, self-reliance, an eventual sense of inadequacy (because we aren’t all powerful), and shame which then leads to isolation and disconnection and an even deeper sense of powerlessness.  Conversely, when we encounter powerlessness, we can respond out of humility, relying on God because He is all-good, omnipotent and He is FOR US.  This then leads to a change in our heart giving us hearts of gratitude, love and trust in the Lord, and a sense of intimacy with Him.

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God intends great things for our lives, but when we look at our personal sufferings, that can be hard to hold onto.  What are we to do with suffering when we don’t experience healing?  There can even be a misconception that there is a certain point in time at which I am finished with my healing journey or that there are people who don’t experience suffering.  Neither of these are true.  We all go through sufferings to one degree or another in this life and healing is an ongoing process.

Since suffering is an ongoing process, healing ought to be, as well.  The Lord’s mercies are renewed each day and He always has greater freedom, joy, and peace for us.  They can be a regular part of our daily prayer times.  If we normalize the concept of suffering, we can be alleviated of the pressure and burden that we aren’t good enough if we still have areas of woundedness.

Life is a process and there’s always something that is going to come forward where the Lord wants to bring us into greater wholeness and deeper relationship with Himself.  Healing is certainly a good thing and something to be open to and seek.  However, there is time.  Life is a process.  The Lord is ever present to us and can even surprise us with healing.  If the Lord is permitting us to suffer, it can be a great challenge for us to trust in God’s love and goodness, but we know that He is all good, all loving, and all wise.

As Catholics, we are privileged to have access to the Lord in His Real Presence.  We don’t have to wait for a healing Mass because every Mass is a healing Mass.  We don’t have to fear pain and suffering when they come, and the Lord hasn’t yet healed it because He is working an even greater healing in us in the waiting.  We don’t suffer alone.  When we unite our sufferings to the Lord’s and suffer them with Him knowing He is suffering them with us, they become an occasion for intimacy.  This is the notion of atonement.  At-one-ment…being at one with Jesus.

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In 1997, I ended up in a roommate situation that turned out to be one of the most dramatic experiences of my life, but the Lord actually used it to teach me tremendous lessons about His wisdom, goodness, power, provision, and desire to be intimately involved in the details of our lives.

I was living in Tampa, FL and with little resources needed to find an inexpensive housing option.  I responded to a classified add where two people were looking for a third roommate.  Shortly after moving in, one of them relocated because of business and we needed another roommate.  The man who moved in turned out to have a long history of violent crimes against women and began murdering women he did not know.

Without any knowledge of his past, the Holy Spirit enlightened me as to the danger I was in and led me, despite my reluctant cooperation, to the information by which we were able to undo his alibi and get a murderer off the streets.  The Lord is certainly able to do anything and uses us in His plan when we cooperate with His grace and direction.

Many years later, the Lord asked me to offer Mass for the same person’s conversion and he confessed to one of the murders he had denied for 25 years.  Finally, that victim’s family was able to gain closure and did not have to withstand a retrial when Florida law changed that called the sentencing into question.

God’s goodness knows no bounds, his power knows no limits, and His desire for the conversion of every single one of us reveals the depth of His love and relentless commitment to us no matter what we’ve done.

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Margaret and Fr. David discuss The Context of Holiness by Fr. Marc Foley, OCD as he examined human and spiritual integration in the life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux.  Her motto of doing little things with great love leaves us a wonderful example of bringing spiritual principles to life.

She experienced a great number of sufferings thru her childhood that became places of insecurity that she overcame thru choosing to make the heroic choices.  She deepened in her sense of security through her identity in the Lord.  This gave her great growth in maturity and bore pure fruit of love, even as she was suffering tremendously with tuberculosis.

Erik Erikson talks about stages of psycho-social development and how we can become stuck at earlier stages when there is wounding that happens.  Yet, her devout life afforded her another parent – God the Father – who she could draw strength from when her earthly parents failed in different ways.  This gives each of us great hope since none of us (other than Jesus) has had perfect parents.  We can follow her example, too.  Our identity is informed by who we are in the Lord.  As we become conformed to this who we are becomes reformed.

Through making choices to exercise great love, she received healing and excelled as novice mistress and in heroic charity that led to her being a saint and doctor of the Church.  She integrated her piety and the principles of our faith in her daily life and relationships. Thérèse chose the gifts of Divine Love and manifest that to her sisters in how she dealt with even the most difficult members of her community.

The Way of Imperfection by André Daigneault is a wonderful little paperback book that fleshes out some core concepts of Thérèse’s ‘little way’.  This fantastic work can plug us into some great helps in becoming conduits of the Lord’s grace.

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Margaret Vasquez, LPCC and Fr. David Tickerhoof, TOR discuss the notion of the baptism in fire that was foretold by St. John the Baptist.

There were graces of renewal flowing from Vatican Council II that brought a deepening of life, power, spiritual gifts, and in particular intimacy of relationship with the Trinity.  This is known as the charismatic renewal or baptism in the Holy Spirit.  Today, we see a resurgence of renewal from the Encounter movement out of Brighton, Michigan.  There is a focus on understanding and practicing the spiritual gifts flowing from the relationship with the Lord.

There’s another dimension known as the baptism in fire (Mt 3:11-12) John the Baptist spoke of when he said the Lord would baptize us in the Holy Spirit and fire.  What is that fire?  In Scripture fire represents the Lord’s presence, purification, and sometimes punishment.  In particular, fire seems to represent power.  That fire becomes transforming power!  We ought not to ignore, but instead be aware of it, open to, and pray for that deeper transformation.

Margaret shares her story of being prayed with for the baptism in fire and how astounding that grace was and was so other than anything she had ever experienced.  The power of God’s love took away every fear, even the fear of death and kept Margaret tethered to the lordship of Jesus even in years of wandering and brokenness where she ended up questioning her faith.

The revelations St. Catherine of Genoa received regarding purgatory essentially saw what is at times consolation, sometimes suffering, even the purifying fires of purgatory to be one fire – the fire of His love!  That can ground us, fill us with gratitude, and help us remember that the Lord is always loving us through whatever He allows in our lives, even if it seems very difficult at the time.

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Peace, freedom, and joy are available to us in this life when we live the principles of chosen, known, valued, boundaries and openness in our relationships with the Lord, ourselves, and others!

The Lord has chosen each one of us personally, knows us intimately, values us completely, and protects and provides for us.  We are likewise called to respond to Him by choosing Him, growing in union with Him, valuing Him for who He is, and receiving His boundaries as gift!  These becoming guiding principles for our lives to lead us toward the abundance He has for us.

As we develop in these areas we grow in both human and spiritual maturity.  These principles help us to focus on being rather than doing.  We can focus on how we are being and, in that way, prevent so many problems.  When we get the being right, the doing takes care of itself.

We are called to make a conscious and intentional choice to take on the mind of Christ.  He is the epitome of love and compassion and it’s essential that we imitate Him in how He sees us.  By collaborating with Him we preserve the gift of peace that was His first gift to us.  We can examine our consciences by these same principles.  Our life of communion with the Lord manifests itself in our relationships.  The connection with the Lord leads to connection with others if we are connected to ourselves.  Focusing on the Lord’s deep love for us changes everything!  It is the power for transformation for our lives.

The Lord has intimately connected how we treat our neighbor with our love for Him.  So, charity is the hallmark virtue that puts it all together.  St. Thérèse of Lisieux lived this in her own life by the deep life of charity she lived even while she was so young and suffering terribly from the symptoms of tuberculosis.

Challenge:  As you read the Mass readings, look to see how the readings fall into the categories of being chosen, known, valued, and/or boundaries.  All of Scripture is about relationship and so you’ll see these themes throughout all of Scripture.

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Compassion, mercy, and forgiveness are essential for healthy relationships.  We have to start from receiving the compassion of the Lord and in order to really do so I have to be compassionate toward myself.  If not, I’ll just deflect the Lord’s love.  That’s not selfish or narcissistic.  It’s taking on the mind of Christ who is compassion itself!  It’s authenticity and honesty, but fully embracing His stance of compassion toward ourselves.

We can learn to express compassion in our daily interactions.  It doesn’t need to be complex or complicated.  It just requires really acknowledging the other person by paying attention to them as individuals and giving those extra couple of seconds to treat them as humans with dignity for even a moment or two.  These things are very evangelistic or ‘pre-evangelistic’.

When we start from such a place, we’ll see the profoundly healing effects in what would otherwise be complicated circumstances.  To operate out of compassion for others we need to have the freedom that comes from not operating out of our own concern for ourselves because our needs have first been satisfied to overflowing by the Lord.

Understanding the principles we all need to have – being valued as individuals, known as good, and our boundaries respected – we can operate very fluidly and confidently.  We start without fear because we understand what is needed and so we don’t have inordinate fear. Changing how we relate to ourselves changes our mode of operation to one of compassion that naturally overflows.  In this way, the Lord’s love can flow not just into us, but through us.  We become the hands and feet of the Lord by relating to others the way He relates to us.

All of this is a process!  It’s a beautiful, life-giving flow of receiving His love, internalizing that and relating to myself with greater compassion and then allowing that to flow out to those I meet each day.  We are able to relate out of love rather than fear.

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It’s essential for lives of wholeness and holiness that we grow in communion with the Lord, personal integration, and charity toward others.  We like to encapsulate all these concepts with the simple term ‘connection’.  The principles are the same in all of these relationships, being chosen, known, valued, protected and provided for.

Today’s conversation focuses on peace, freedom, and great relationships particularly through personal integration and charity toward others.  This is particularly done through having mercy toward ourselves and toward others, which has been a continual theme of the last few popes.  It’s really essential to our holiness and well-being.

Ironically, we need to make sure we are charitable toward ourselves before we can have the charity to extend toward others.  We can tend to skip over this concept, falsely viewing it as selfish, but it’s Scriptural.  “Love your neighbor as yourself”(Mark 12:31).  That becomes our mode of operation.  If we have a mode of charity and love, that is the mode through which we relate to the Lord and by which we reach out to others.

Charity toward ourselves requires us to be patient and intentional in our relationship to ourselves.  We need to intentionally choose to relate to ourselves from the basis that we are ‘very good’ based on our dignity as children of God.  This allows us the sense of safety by which to operate out of a deep sense of safety and peace.  It sets us in a place of being able to really conceive that the Lord loves us deeply and then to be able to truly receive His love.  Relating to ourselves out of a contrary attitude sets us up to be lied to by the evil one and to fall into discouragement.  Self-talk is so crucial because it reveals those attitudes we have toward ourselves.  We need to respect our own boundaries in our self-talk, not overextending ourselves, running ourselves ragged, and stressing ourselves out beyond what is healthy.

Boundary setting with others is important because it helps to establish rules of engagement so we can give each other the opportunity to love and respect each other.  They are a gift by which we can work towards common ground for relating in freedom and mutual respect for each other’s needs.  They can free us up and help us avoid undue and unspoken expectations, resentment, and conflict.  Peaceful and healthy relating doesn’t have to be complicated.

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Episode #4 – The Importance of Human and Spiritual Integration

As Christians we can tend to over spiritualize, and secular society tends to under spiritualize.

We need a paradigm by which to understand how to build a firm foundation that includes both human and spiritual maturity.

A healthy human maturity helps us break down and apply the spiritual information we take in.  It helps us be refreshed by the Living Waters of the Lord and allows them to flow out of our lives in a way where they become part of who we are and how we live in relationship to others.  To the truths of our faith, we ought to ask, “What does this have to do with me and how does it apply in my life?”  We are called to let them pierce our hearts, renew our minds, and get applied in our lives.

We can see the pillars of wholeness and holiness in ‘connection’, that is: communion with the Lord, personal integration, and charity and compassion toward others.  There are common principles across each of these relationships – chosen, known, valued, boundaries, and openness is a byproduct of those factors.

Oftentimes our relationship to ourselves gets overlooked and yet it’s really the hinge point.  We need to really receive the infinite love of the Lord and imitate that love in how we relate to ourselves because that same mode of relating becomes how we relate to our neighbor, as Scripture tells us to love our neighbor the way we love ourselves (Mk 12:31).  We operate out of fear when we lack a healthy sense of connection, and we operate out of love when we have that healthy connection.

The fruit of knowing we are chosen by the Lord is a sense of belonging, being known perfectly by Him provides us with the most profound intimacy, being established in the fact that our value is inherent in our dignity as children of God we have the fruit of humility, the Lord’s boundaries (His protection and provision for us) bears the fruit of gratitude, and the openness that is a byproduct of those four principles leads to the fruit of authenticity.

CLICK HERE to download the notes for this podcast

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Continuing in our understanding of the biology of trauma, trauma is anything that overwhelms the person’s normal ability to cope.  Inherent in that definition is the fact that you and I are different people with different pasts and perspectives.  I might be traumatized by a situation that you may not feel strongly effected by.  That doesn’t make one of us right and the other wrong.  It’s actually due to a variety of factors having to do with what we perceive as threat.

When we are traumatized, the brain can encode any of the sensory stimuli (sights, sounds, smells, emotions, even our own body sensations) as signs of life-or-death threat because it associates those experiences with the trauma in which we felt so significantly in danger.  Sometimes we are aware of those associations when they are reexperienced, but we may very well be unaware of them because the limbic system (the emotional center of the brain) sits deep inside the brain and right on top of the brain stem.  The same way we are unaware of our respiration, digestion, heartbeat and the like we can be just as unaware of our emotions turning from joyous to anger due to encountering a reminder of a past trauma.  When this happens, we can respond with a vehemence and intensity that disturbs even ourselves and, if this happens often, can leave us feeling broken, vulnerable and very different from others.

With this background, we can see that we are not our emotions, rather we have emotions.  Therefore, we can respond to our emotions rather than responding out of emotions because emotions are information.  So, we can take that information into account and yet we aren’t bound to respond as though it is Gospel truth.   Rather, we can account for the fact that it may be skewed.  We have emotions.  We are not our emotions.  They are important information, but only one source of information.  We can prudently pay attention to the information and take into account other information, as well.  The greatest information we have is that we are dearly beloved children of the Omnipotent, Omniscient, All-Loving God who is madly and passionately in love with us personally.  No matter what others have done to us and no matter what we have done He will us it – Scripture tells us He uses “ALL THINGS” for our good.

May the Lord give YOU peace!

Key words:  trauma, information, misinformation, emotions, limbic system

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